In 1809, when he was thirty-seven, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge paused to recall a youthful dream, a plan he had hatched fifteen years earlier to immigrate to America and start there a new society governed by his own homemade intellectual system, which he called...
Theology
Consciousness and Materialism
Really good stuff from a great Christian writer and wide-ranging reader and thinker, Alan Jacobs (can't help saying it again: I loved the remarkable book Original Sin). Turns out evolutionary scientists don't really know how consciousness is possible in a...
The Correct Shape of the Petals in a TUDIP
I personally do not hold to the doctrine of limited atonement as I understand it. I can get there theologically, and the idea doesn't bother or offend me—but I can't get there exegetically. I find efforts to get around 1 John 2:2 to be just that. I have not made the...
Dr. Bob Jones Sr’s First Use of “All Ground Is Holy Ground”
The sayings of Dr. Bob Jones Sr are legendary around my alma mater. As a frequent victim of chronological snobbery, I was ready to be critical and dismissive of these statements when I first saw them tacked above chalkboards in classrooms. But I was won over by...
Review: Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief
Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief by John M. Frame My rating: 4 of 5 stars When a systematic theology begins with a series of endorsements that are longer than certain other systematics, you know you’ve got either a goldmine or a naked emperor....
Limits on Meaning in Language
I received a nice e-mail from an appreciative reader not long ago; I confess it was a big encouragement to know that one of the droplets of water I've been spraying into the Internet ocean hit a surfer. Actually, he found me while searching for "God and...
Fantastic Piece by Douthat
I'm really coming to enjoy reading Ross Douthat's columns. I should have subscribed a long time ago. He's reasonable and measured, and though (and because) he's Catholic, we have similar worldviews. This was just a fantastic—but still measured, not...
The New Calvinism in the New York Times
Two little points about this interesting little New York Times article (which doesn't end up saying much): 1. I wouldn't exactly agree with Oppenheimer's off-handed summary of Calvinistic belief: The Puritans were Calvinist. Presbyterians descend from Scottish...
Review: Christ and Culture Revisited
Christ and Culture Revisited by D.A. Carson My rating: 3 of 5 stars Carson serves up reminder after reminder that the question of context is all-important both in the interpretation of scripture and in its application to our current situation(s). Where Niebuhr is a...
Charles Hodge on Roman Catholic Idolatry
I recently found some genuine insight, new to me at least, in Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology. I offer it here not merely so you can stack up some ammo for debate, ammo you may never get to use anyway, but so you yourself can by God's grace obey the second of the...
Vern Poythress and Level 3b
The BJU Press Bible Integration team, in which I am thankful to be an insignificant cog, uses a rubric of sorts to gauge whether or not we're really doing Bible integration. I've written about it before. We call it, informally, "the levels." The three levels of Bible...
Alan Jacobs: The Hermeneutics of Love
Anything combining love and epistemology fascinates me, so I've thought of the following excerpt from Alan Jacobs' challenging book A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love many times. If he or his publisher believes that including an excerpt of this length (I...